Archive for January, 2007

Faculty podcasting can be a great way to promote academic expertise to external audiences.

As reported in “History Teacher Becomes Podcast Celebrity” published today in The New York Times, Lars Brownworth, a history teacher at a boarding school in Long Island, NY, the Stony Brook School, has become a podcasting success story with his series about the Byzantine Empire reaching 140,000 listeners from around the world:

In barely 18 months, Mr. Brownworth’s podcast, “12 Byzantine Rulers”, has become one of the phenomena of the podcasting world. A survey of 1,200 years of rather abstruse history, starting with Diocletian in 284 and finishing with Constantine XI Palaeologus in 1453, “12 Byzantine Rulers” routinely ranks in the top five educational podcasts on iTunes, and in the top 50 of all podcasts.

I actually started to listen to these podcasts last summer and got hooked as the other listeners did. These podcasts are engaging and full of lively stories about these emperors – whom I wouldn’t call the nicest people in the world ;-)

I’ve just found out in the NYT article (well, I didn’t look/google him up before) that Brownworth isn’t a college professor and holds a BA in history – not a Master or a Ph.D.

So, besides his true passion for the Byzantine Empire, what makes Brownworth’s podcasts so different compared to most of the faculty podcasts out there?

They aren’t just recorded lectures. They are written to be podcasted and rehearsed as described in the NYT article:

That night, though, Mr. Brownworth, 31, set to work in his own apartment, writing an essay about Alexius I Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. After revision and rehearsal, the text would become the script for the latest installment of Mr. Brownworth’s podcast.

Brownworth has also a nice voice (he should think about going into video podcasting as he happens to be a good looking man, too – but I digress ;-)

If your institution is really toying with the idea of using faculty podcasts to promote academic expertise or excellence to external audiences, it would probably be a good idea to “cast” your potential candidates and try to have them create something targeted to the medium.

I know, I know that’s probably not part of their job description and wouldn’t even be something taken into consideration by tenure committees, but you won’t find a rare bird if you don’t look for it.

What do you think? Do you have a very successful faculty podcast at your institution? Let us know by posting a comment!

As announced earlier this morning, the Division of Student Affairs at NC State held, this afternoon, a very interesting panel discussion titled “The Facebook Phenomenon.”

The 2-hour webcast was really good (kudos to the AV, IT and Web teams!) and will be available online later this week. In the meantime, you can have a look at the PowerPoint presentation used during the discussion.

“The Facebook Phenomenon” at NC State – The panelists

What a neat idea to follow up an event (definitely something to steal – I mean borrow – if you’re going to use the Facebook to promote your special events)!

Now, let me share a few of my notes.

Fred Stutzman shared some interesting stats about the research he conducted about the Facebook at UNC.

In 2005, he found that 85% of the incoming freshman class at UNC had already an account set up before the first day of class, proportion that grows to 94% a few months later.

Sarah Noell, Assistant Director, Computing Services (sorry didn’t get a chance to capture a screenshot of her), explained what NCSU does to educate students, faculty and staff on how to use social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace, basically giving workshops during orientation and providing information on how to show responsible behavior and be aware of privacy issues.

Paul Cousins, Director, Office of Student Conduct at NC State University explained that his office monitors Facebook for student misconduct as it does with other online tools.

He also confirmed that Facebook is used to find out more about prospective students by admission committees at NCSU.

Later in the discussion, an online participant from the University of California in Riverside asked if using Facebook in the hiring process of university staff couldn’t be a liability for the institution. With all the demographic information available on these profiles, institutions using Facebook early in their hiring process might be accused of discrimination.

Privacy issues, stalking and academic uses were also touched by the panel.

If you (or your boss) really need a good primer about this topic, I highly recommend that you watch the archived webcast.

Did you watch the webcast? Share your opinion by posting a comment!

If you have a bit of time this afternoon (or can multi-task in front of your computer), make sure you watch the 2-hour webcast of “The Facebook Phenomenon,” a panel talk organized by the division of Student Affairs at NC State University and scheduled to start at 2PM ET:

Facebook. MySpace. Friendster. These social networking sites and others dominate the culture of today’s college students, and remain a mystery for many faculty and staff who serve those students. Join us as we explore the “Facebook Phenomenon” and its impact on our students and our institutions. Those of us working in higher education – regardless of our role – can’t truly serve our students well unless we understand our students well. Taking time to learn more about Facebook will help us make sense about how our students are thinking, communicating, and making decisions.

While much of the current news surrounding Facebook focuses on issues such as privacy, security and questionable decision making by students, there are also those who believe that Facebook and other online communities are allowing students to network in positive ways. Both of these perspectives will be covered in the program.

In addition to its impact on individual students, institutions are responding to Facebook in a number of ways. Some have chosen to respond with changes in policies, student education, while others are still debating the issues. Present your questions to our panel of experts, who represent a wide array of experiences, research and opinions on this important topic.

While 4 out of 5 panelists are from NCSU, they include administrators, students and faculty members.

Admission to the webcast is free, but you need to register to give them an idea of how many people will be logging in. Once registered, you will even be able to ask questions via email or instant messenger (instructions can be found on the webcast page).

I’m going to do my best to watch it (but with webcasts, you never know…) and will share my notes with you. Please post comments below if you can attend to let us know what you learn from this event.

I love conferences.

A conference is a great way to learn and share while meeting interesting people. I wish I could go to more…

I’ve been invited to present at 2 conferences this year (more details about these when everything is confirmed).
In the meantime, here is my short list for higher ed conferences to watch in 2007:

• EduWeb: July 22-24, 2007 in Baltimore, MD
  As announced a few months ago on this blog, EduWeb Conference Director Shelley Wetzel should offer this year again another great conference. The call for proposals will be open online from February 5 to March 16, 2007.
• HighEdWebDev: October 14-17, 2007 in Rochester, NY (the website wasn’t up at the time of this writing, but check www.highedweb.org/2007 in the future)
  This morning in a message to the u-webd listserv, the Program Chair Doug Tschopp indicated that the call for proposals should be out soon. What’s new this year is the addition of a Web Marketing track to the conference program.
• Educomm 2007: June 19-21, 2007 in Anaheim, CA
  You might not have heard about this one yet unless you read University Business or works for an academic computing, AV or IT department. Organized by the publisher of UB, the 4th edition of this conference is opening up this year to topics that might be of interest for Web and Marketing folks.. The call for proposals is open online until February 16, 2007.
• HigherEdBlogCon
  This great online (free) conference launched in April last year won’t happen in 2007. One of its co-founders Dan Karleen confirmed the bad news in an email earlier this week.

Do you plan to attend another great conference this year? Tell us why by posting a comment below.

How can you convey academic expertise in a 2-minute online video?

Stick to this one-question interview format used by Duke University’s Office of News & Communication.

In this video available on YouTube and titled “Duke University Professor Explains Why So Many Lemur Species,” Anne Yoder, the director of Duke Lemur Center, answers a question pertaining to what is a current issue in her field.

It’s short, to the point and done on location in front of a few representatives of the lemur population.

The one-question interview definitely works well to promote the academic expertise of professors as well as their ability to perform on camera.

This kind of online videos can show the expertise of your faculty members in an engaging format accessible to the public while increasing at the same time their chance to get interviewed by media representatives – just include a link to your videos in your regular pitches so TV reporters can get a preview of your experts.

What do you think? In your opinion, how could this format be improved?

According to the 2007 Horizon report, while user-created content and social networking are already facts of life on campuses across the world, mobile phones and virtual worlds will also be widely used in higher education by 2010.

Released today by The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program, this report is definitely a must-read as it offers a good picture of the current trends and technologies that are going to deeply impact the world of higher education:

“To create the 2007 Horizon Report, the 27 members of the 2007 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of more than 100 candidate technologies that emerged for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression. The 2007 Advisory Board included representatives from eight countries: the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, Japan, and China. Most of their work took place online over fall 2006, using a variety of collaboration tools, notably a special wiki site dedicated to the project.”

This 32-page report is available as a free PDF file under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can print it and makes copies for your VP’s and President.

What really makes this report a great resource is the way the highlighted technologies are presented:

• an overview
• why they are relevant to teaching, learning and creative expression
• current examples in different institutions (with links)
• online resources for further reading

I really think this is a great tool for any of those trying to make the case for user-created content, social networking, mobile phone or virtual worlds on their campus.

I saw this video at the CASE conference back in September. It was part of the keynote presentation by Joe Hice, UF Associate Vice President for Marketing & Public Relations.

At that time, I really thought it was a very good candidate for a viral video campaign and mentioned it to Joe: it’s funny, smart and informative.

This 10-minute video includes a movie trailer as well as the making of “The Undergraduate.” It describes the whole college experience at the University of Florida in a very engaging way by following the adventures of an… undergraduate. The cast is composed of UF students and faculty. The art director who uploaded the video to Youtube is also behind the GoGators TV ad.

What do you think?

What a great and different way to promote an academic department to the campus community and the world!

I know, I know, this first line isn’t very informative, but I really think West Virginia University is defintely onto something with the blog recently launched by its Philosophy department and its Web Services: The Question.

And, actually I’m not the only one as the blog is highlighted in the Jan. 22 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Yes, you’ve read correctly Sports Illustrated and a philosophy blog…

This academic department blog invites its readers to answer questions of the philosophical kind. And, because VWU went (and won) the Gator Bowl — that’s why SI got all interested in the first place — The Question more recently dealt with philosophical questions such as “Is Winning Everything?” (32 reader comments at the time of this writing) or “What’s the Difference between a Game and a Sport?”.

What I really find interesting is how this academic initiative is really about conversations, which is why a blog is such the perfect fit.

By focusing on a single question by blog post and inviting “guest philosophers” to weigh in, the blog makes philosophy go out of its academic closet. It’s also a good example on how to promote academic expertise in a format accessible to the general public.

In the email he sent this morning about this blog, David Olsen from VWU Web Services was right on target when he wrote: “it shows that there are interesting uses for blogs and ones other then just the “admissions blog” that might affect recruitment and getting people engaged directly with a department.”

If any of you use blogs (or wikis, podcasts, online video, etc.) in some innovative ways, drop me a note at karine@collegewebeditor.com. I’m always interested in showcasing good ideas and original initiatives.

Even if we cross their path everyday on campus, it’s sometimes easy to forget what makes our college students tick.

I’m currently doing a bit of digging for a project of mine and thought I would share with you three interesting resources about young adults:

• USA Today Generation Next Index
  I’ve seen a lot of stories in USA Today about young adults, but just realized today that these were all part of a series. In this convenient index, you’ll find a lot of articles that should help you learn more about this generation.

• The News Hour Generation Next Website
  Here you’ll find videos and audio news clips. Something you might want to use to spice up your presentations and show to your stakeholders how this generation uses technology as a few reports deal with social networking websites, online gaming, etc.
• A Portrait of “Generation Next”
  How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics
  A report published last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that gives a pretty good picture of this generation. Available as a PDF file, this 45-page report is drawn from several studies, but the main survey was conducted Sept. 6-Oct. 2, 2006 among 1,501 adults – including 579 people ages 18-25.

This is probably one of my crazy Tuesday ideas, but let’s see…

This morning, I came across (via Will Richardson) TV Jersey, an initiative by a “group of writers, photographers, graphic artists and editors at The Star-Ledger in Newark.”

Their mission? To bodly go where no New Jerseyans has gone before…

“New Jersey needs a television station to call its own. Programmed by New Jerseyans, for New Jerseyans. TVJersey has no broadcast towers, no satellites. It doesn’t even have a studio. But it has you. And what you produce, we’ll promote.”

This team of newspaper folks has decided to launch an online user-generated TV channel, powered by YouTube, broadcasting videos produced by the good people of New Jersey and selected by this new brand of TV executives.

A pretty neat idea, especially because it’s very simple. To be considered for inclusion, YouTube users just need to tag their video with “tvjersey.”

I guess it could also become a good – indirect – way to pitch stories to these newspaper folks — that is if your institution is based in New Jersey (but that’s just in my twisted and evil PR mind or is it?)

Anyway, since more and more institutions have started to upload their videos (or their students’) to YouTube, I’ve just realized that this idea could be easily transferred (stolen?) to help everybody working in higher education keep up with what other institutions do in terms of web videos (or show off with your fantastic productions ;-).

So, what’s the plan for this experimental Higher Ed TV?

• Just tag your new or already-uploaded videos with higheredtv
• They will be reposted on this blog (as long as they fit the requirements — news or institutional higher ed videos) with a short analysis by yours truly
• This blog’s readers will then be able to comment the videos

If you find this service useful, the sky is the limit… (I’ve even registered the domain name)

Now, in case you don’t want to upload your videos to YouTube for copyright reasons, but would be interested in promoting them through this new initiative, we would need to work something out. A signed release allowing me to rebroadcast them from your own servers (sorry, but I can’t afford my own streaming server yet) would probably do the trick.

Anyway, just let me know if any of you are interested or if this is just one of my Tuesday crazy ideas?